


Untitled

by ceresilupin



Category: Animorphs - Katherine A. Applegate
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-29
Updated: 2011-07-29
Packaged: 2017-10-21 22:05:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/230367
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ceresilupin/pseuds/ceresilupin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ax and Tobias are on a road trip, without the road. Set post-series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Untitled

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Fickle](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Fickle).



“Chicken,” Ax said. “Chicken. Chick. Ick. Ck. Ck. En. Chchchch - sorry.”

Tobias flashed him a strained smile, poking half-heartedly at his slice of chocolate pie. Ax eyed it covetously. A moment later, it slid to the other side of the table, and promptly disappeared.

“Tobias,” Ax said. Tobias could tell the difference between Ax talking and Ax muttering; he didn’t look up. “Toe. Toe. Toe-buh. Eyeus.”

Tobias snorted.

“To-bi. To-be. Toby.” Ax clicked his tongue and said more normally, “Tobias.”

Tobias looked up and his left eyebrow twitched. “There’s chocolate on your nose,” he observed, charmed and amused. Ax hunted for a clean napkin -- the pile on his side of the table was nearing critical mass -- and Tobias handed him one. The chocolate was mostly removed.

“Tobias,” Ax started again. “Do you wish to not be disturbed?”

A faint blush climbed into Tobias’s cheeks. The only emotions that showed on his face were the involuntary ones. “What do you mean?” he asked, monotone voice, impassive expression. Ax found it reassuring, not like Prince Jake, always teetering on the brink of some deep depression, or Marco, mercurial and sharp like glass. Even Cassie was unpredictable, fluctuating between brief periods of happiness and inexplicable distress.

“You have been very quiet since yesterday,” Ax pointed out. There was a brief pause for him to mutter, “Iet, iet,” and then he continued. “Did that girl’s remark unsettle you? In Fort Collins?” He was used to Tobias’s erratic schedule in their unplanned tour of the world, but flying seventy miles in a single night was unusually driven.

“What?” Tobias feigned shock unconvincingly, mostly because he bothered to feign it at all. “No, nothing like that.”

Ax inclined his head politely, letting the lie slide, and began gathering up his used napkins to throw away. The people at the counter watched him with some alarm. Behind them, a cardboard cutout of a cow advised him to eat more chicken.

“Icken, icken.” Ax returned to the table mumbling, with two refills and a handful of ketchups. Tobias confiscated them immediately. “Icken,” Ax muttered forlornly.

They were silent for a long time. Ax went to the bathroom to de- and remorph. He returned and Tobias had not moved.

“Tobias,” he finally ventured. “We have been here for approximately three of your hours and sixteen of your minutes.” He double-checked just to be sure. “If I eat any more chicken as the cows advise, I think I will be ill.”

Tobias covered his face and laughed silently, his shoulders shaking.

“What are we waiting for?” Ax asked. “Why are we in Laramie why-oh-ming?”

Tobias lowered his hands, fidgeting and fiddling with the ketchup packets. He snuck a glance at Ax through the unruly fringe of his hair.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. The packet fell from his fingers and he leaned back, turning his face away. The plastic booth creaked protest. “I guess I wanted to see if there was something here. . . .” He gave a small shake of his head.

“Worth seeing?” Ax prompted. “Ing, ing.”

“Worth saving,” Tobias corrected.

Ax felt his chest constrict, an odd human sensation. “Oh,” he said, and rubbed his breastbone to make the feeling go away. It didn’t work.

Tobias lifted his head, scanning the other patrons, the windows, with a raptor’s intensity. His lips moved in a brief, bleak little smile. “Sometimes,” he confided, “I wonder why anyone would ever want to be human.”

Unsettled, Ax remained silent. He didn’t understand why Tobias was like this, why he was so defeated inside. It had something to do with this journey -- _like a road trip,_ Tobias had said, _without the road_ \-- some profound lacking, some profound discontent. Like he was waiting for the world to evolve, to notice that something had changed. But three years after it was over, no one recognized them anymore, and it wasn’t because either of them had changed.

They hadn’t.

Ax understood all of this without understanding. He didn’t know why Tobias didn’t like humans, because he himself did. It was why he was in Laramie, with Tobias, not home, with his people. It hurt him when Tobias was this way.

“Ax,” Tobias started, and stopped. Ax waited.

But instead Tobias stood, stretching and shaking the tension from his limbs. “Let’s go,” he said. “Somewhere else.”

His fingers brushed the back of Ax’s head as he passed. By the time Ax turned, he was already out the door, disappearing into the darkness behind the glass. As was on his feet and following before he registered the movement -- outside, he caught a glimpse of movement as Tobias disappeared upwards, a dark shape against darker trees. And then just stars.

He found a space behind the restaurant, shed his bulky outer clothes, and followed Tobias into the sky.


End file.
